Caption: False color ALI image of the southern tip of El Hierro, taken on November 1, 2011. You can clearly see the small scoria cones on the island itself and the submarine vent is likely very similar to these cones.

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Caption: Increasing tremor recorded on El Hierro in the Canary Islands on November 3, 2011. Data courtesy of IGN.es

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Caption: A small piece of the erupted material recovered from the new El Hierro vent - likely a mixed magma.

False color ASTER image of the southern tip of El Hierro, taken on Nov. 1, 2011. You can clearly see the small scoria cones on the island itself and the submarine vent is likely very similar to these cones. Image courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory.

A small piece of the erupted material recovered from the new El Hierro vent - likely a mixed magma. Image from Diario El Hierro

Now, after the initial analyses of these floating blobs suggesting something like 75 percent aluminum, which is an entirely unrealistic composition for any magma, and now suddenly new analyses say they are pretty standard magmas, you might be wondering what happened. Well, it is likely something like the joke from The Simpsons after Mr. Burns gets shot: “Mr. Burns was taken to Springfield General where he was pronounced dead. He was moved to a better hospital where his condition was upgraded to ‘alive'”. Very quick, early analyses are usually not too reliable because they are hastily done on the equipment on hand, which might not be the best for the task. Given some time, proper analyses of the material can be done on better instrumentation that gives a more reliable composition for the rocks.

So, it seems that the wait will continue for the people of El Hierro — what will happen next as this volcano revives itself after hundreds of years (at least) of quiet. So far, the eruptions have been mostly harmless to the general population, and hopefully it will remain this way. However, the waiting may be the hardest part in this situation.